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Metro 2033: The Last Refuge
Metro 2033: The Last Refuge has been in development since 2005. And had a video which you can see below come out in 2006. And that has really been it until recently.
The year, is obviously 2033, the world, post apocalyptic world with only 40,000 people left alive. Those left alive have been living in metro of a big ex-USSR city, Moscow for the last 20 years. Nuclear war destroyed their homeland. These people are the last representatives of mankind – human cycle of evolution nears its end, new species (very ugly) appear on the surface of the Earth and deep inside of metro. Some people inside the metro still remember happy years before THAT DAY and they still believe that one day they will return up to the surface. What’s present is a very heavy psychological atmosphere: small children who will never see sky, old people who still remember the PAST times, and young men and women who fight for their world, for their children. Each station became a country, with its government, army, borders and many other things from the past. Firearms cartridges serve as currency.
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The basic features of the game:
* Location – post-apocalyptic Moscow, the life of humanity gleams in metro (subway) tunnels, and the stations turned into small states with different political regimes.
* Variety of gameplay styles – possibility to play as a heavy strike fighter, as an inconspicuous killer.
* A player, who attentively follows the events in the game world, will find out ways to influence the advance of the plot and may reach the non-standard end. Besides the basic plot, there is a variety of non-obligatory tasks.
* In station-cities it is possible to meet as fighters, as peaceful citizens and the station lives its own life independent from player.
* The high-level AI empowered to model the NPC behaviour in close combat similar to real people actions. The enemies may conduct simple and aimed fire, avoid line of fire, hide in covers, ambush and attack suddenly, call for help, and mention a character hidden in shadow.
* A number of various anomalies: gravitation distortion, energy clot (looking at some of which the character may perish), intelligent immaterial images, which punish with death for any aggression at their presence and many other, the role of which will be discovered only before the game release.
* Ammo-money. Fire off money or be economic, use tactics.
* Variety of mini games.
* Unique machinery of new world: trolleys which act as armored personal carriers, weaponry made from remains, with only few abilities compared to originals.
The game will hopefully come out this year on the PC, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360.
Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
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